I realized he was talking to me. The others seemed part of a frieze of rapt-faced people who squeezed their drinks in front of them. I took my time lighting a cigarette.

“They’re right,” I said.

Awareness that I’d snubbed him stained Carr’s face with anger. Sandra Carr turned white. In the silence, Kris Ann turned to me holding out her glass. “I’m dry, Adam,” she said quietly. “Could you get me another?”

She looked coolly to Carr until he stopped glaring and seemed almost to deflate. I waited him out, then took her glass. From a corner Rayfield ran a long appraising look from me to Kris Ann to me again as I went toward the bar.

It was crowded now. There was sweat on Carter’s forehead as he worked among angry, competing voices, watching the party for signals from yet other drinkers, the privileged ones who’d slipped him a hundred dollars at Christmas. West Lounge Winnie watched him blankly, hairdo canted dangerously to one side. Next to her a towering woman who’d been flirting with someone else saw her husband moving toward them. “Here comes Donald,” she drawled. “My God, I despise that man.” Arriving, Donald looked at the pair with great, tragic eyes. “What will the symphony do without Lydia?” he asked, and began to weep. I took my cigarette to the veranda.

For a while I leaned on the railing. The swimming pool below was a turquoise rectangle that shimmered with submerged light. I hardly heard the footsteps.

Frenzied hands choked me by the collar. I wheeled with my fist in the air. The woman shrieked: “Doll lady, fucking doll lady,” in a harsh, crazy voice, over and over.

“Shut up,” I snapped. “What the hell is wrong with you?”

She stopped, staring at her shoes, abashed. My arm dropped. In the dim light she was just a raddled blonde with overripe hips and the pigeon-toed stance of a drunk. “Find your husband,” I said, more reasonably. “You’re drunk.”

“No blood.” She nodded ponderously, as if that were very profound. “No blood.”

She looked at me for approval. Through the window behind her, foolish mouths smiled and lips moved that made no sound. Then there was the sigh of a sliding glass door and a tall man stepped from the ballroom, glancing over his shoulder. “Joanne,” he called in a low voice.

She stiffened, and as the man came out of darkness I placed them both. Dalton Mooring was the president of Maddox Coal and Steel. The woman was his wife.

He stopped short of her. They looked at each other in dim light from the pool, as if I were forgotten. In a strained, weary undertone, he said, “Again.”

She looked pasty and about to vomit. “Better take her home,” I told him.